The Bride of the Nile — Complete eBook

the sistrum with its metal rings, drumming and trumpeting,
shouting and yelling, to scare off the evil one and
drive him away. It may be about four hundred years
since that last took place, but to this day—­draw
your kerchiefs more closely round your heads and come
with me to the river—­to this day Christians
degrade themselves by similar rites. Wherever
I have been in Christian lands, I have always witnessed
the same scenes: our holy faith has, to be sure,
demolished the religions of the heathen; but their
superstitions have survived, and have forced their
way through rifts and chinks into our ceremonial.
They are marching round now, with the bishop at their
head, and you can hear the loud wailing of the women,
and the cries of the men, drowning the chant of the
priests. Only listen! They are as passionate
and agonized in their entreaty as though old Typhon
were even now about to swallow the moon, and the greatest
catastrophe was hanging over the world. Aye,
as surely as man is the standard of all things, those
terrified beings are diseased in mind; and how are
we to forgive those who dare to scare Christians;
yes, Christian souls, with the traditions of heathen
folly, and to blind their inward vision?”

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THE BRIDE OF THE NILE

By Georg Ebers

Volume 6.

CHAPTER XXII.

Up to within a few days Katharina had still been a
dependent and docile child, who had made it a point
of honor to obey instantly, not only her mother’s
lightest word, but Dame Neforis, too; and, since her
own Greek instructress had been dismissed, even the
acid Eudoxia. She had never concealed from her
mother, or the worthy teacher whom she had truly loved,
the smallest breach of rules, the least naughtiness
or wilful act of which she had been guilty; nay, she
had never been able to rest till she had poured out
a confession, before evening prayer, of all that her
little heart told her was not perfectly right, to some
one whom she loved, and obtained full forgiveness.
Night after night the “Water-wagtail”
had gone to sleep with a conscience as clear and as
white as the breast of her whitest dove, and the worst
sin she had ever committed during the day was some
forbidden scramble, some dainty or, more frequently,
some rude and angry word.